PLAYING STRATEGIES

It is fascinating to observe the differences in game play whenever we play with different people. EP and I are the table constants, and we play alternately with two major groupings, AJ/WJ being one and KP/AW being the other. EP seems to be able to adapt his play accordingly to the group we are playing with, and I notice that he seems to win or lose at similar rates no matter which group we happen to be playing with. Nothing surprising for someone who has been playing frequently for more than fifteen years.

My own strategy line runs along chow based hands. It stems from the days when I used to play the Singapore mah-jong variant. We usually play with a one-double minimum constrain. In most situations where the initial deal has no obvious directions or special distributions, and I have no luck with getting the necessary bonus (animal/flower/season) tiles to achieve the one double, I almost always go with a ping-hu strategy and develop from there. It’s extremely flexible and the requirement for two or more sided waits just increases the chance of drawing the winning tiles. Ping-hu in Singapore mahjong is worth at least one double by itself, and if no flowers are drawn by the time player wins the hand, you get four doubles for that hand!

As such, when I started playing MCR, I played in a similar manner, except of course now we would have to manipulate our chows to mean something more. I have to agree with those who feel that MCR favours chow-based play; because there is immense flexibility in the chow hands and the scoring makes it pretty worthwhile to pursue this line. When pursuing single suited straights and shifted chows, there is also the option of expanding to half flush or full flush hands for additional scoring. Also, not having to pung means less melding of sets which improves defence as well.

Playing with AJ and WJ complements my style of playing and I don’t do too badly normally. Because we all favour chow based hands, tiles don’t get stuck too often. It becomes more of a speed issue – who gets ready first wins first and there are equal chances for everyone. AJ occasionally does what I call her “crazy pungs”, big pung hands involving a lot of honours tiles, or high scoring patterned pungs but these are usually fully melded hands and defence is much easier so she doesn’t get to win these too often.

Whenever I play with KP and AW, the games tend to be close fights all the way and I come out of them in bad shape and totally drained and demoralised. KP plays MCR the way he plays Singapore mah-jong – plenty of dragon pungs, all pung hands, half and full flushes, and the very occasional pure straight. I have yet to see any type of shifted chows out of him yet. AW is very much more flexible and loves novelty hands, so it difficult to predict what she is going to do.

When playing with KP and AW, EP seems to draw from the synergy and starts playing similarly, and the occurrence of pung hands increases exponentially. That makes things extremely difficult for me. My suit tiles get used up everywhere, or they get all thrown out before I have a chance to draw connecting tiles. I target a certain mixed shifted hand, someone pung/kong a crucial tile early, I shift again, someone else pungs another crucial tile, I shift again and find another crucial tile dead. I end most of these games getting nowhere near ready to go out, with plenty of holes in my chow hands.

We also observe that when playing with KP and AW, the number of hands ending in draws also increases quite a bit. This happens especially when I decide that if you can’t win them, join them, and force myself to play pung hands with less than optimal number of pairs in the initial deal (in my own opinion at least). I imagine us as four stags with our horns locked in stalemate.

So far, I have managed to prevailed with KP and AW, and have ended up with at least a second or third table placing, partly through sheer luck (in my own opinion). Several times, just as I thought I would end up with my first zero table point, I get to win a relatively large self drawn hand in the last two or three hands of the game that would put me in a shaky second place/third placing at the end. Scores are close enough such that any of us could overtake the other with a small win. The situation is rather unlike the mostly steady lead that I am able to maintain throughout a game with AJ and WJ. I don’t like the idea of keeping my lead through luck, because that is not dependable. I would like to be able to hold against all comers at all times.

Through all the above experiences and analyses, I am trying to develop more flexibility in playing. As I have discussed with EP, it is more about fundamental mindsets at work. If I think that pung based hands are harder to achieve than chow based/all chows hands, I would always play in a way to facilitate chow based hands, such as discarding honour tiles right at the start, committing to pung hands no less than four pairs in the initial deal and passing over early chances for melding pungs. For example, we always marvel how KP manages to get dragon pungs when he is plays all pungs. Then I found out that the keeps his singular dragon tiles until it gets very late in the game. There is therefore a high chance that he would draw their twins and get to pung them late in the game, thus making his pung hands viable. I would have to start playing against my instincts until I get comfortable with the idea.

However, we are already familiar with these players and have had the chance to observe their game play habits and strategy and analyse how we are affected and how to counter them effectively. I am sure the same opportunity does not arise during tournaments. One would probably only be able to strategise defence play based on the actual situation the table. How does one strategise one’s basic game play strategy during tournaments? Benjamin Boas mentioned in his blog that he uses the “cheap and fast” technique to get his wins. I understand from various reads that the Japanese players are whizzes with concealed hands due to their background from Riichi. Are these strategies which work all the time, against all type of players? If not, is there actually an optimal strategy that works all the time against all types of players?

I continue to ponder…..